By Christopher Oluwole, Ciara Sheerin, & Betsey Carroll
We Embrace Fatherhood is a nonprofit, community led organization that aims to promote and facilitate intentional transformation of families. The organization was founded in 2020 and hosts services and programming with a focus on mentorship, health, education, community outreach, community accountability and promotion of activism for the purpose of inspiring equitable change. Their mission and vision are exemplified through their We Embrace Fatherhood Pledge.
Image description: We Embrace Fatherhood logo which shows a taller yellow figure with its arms around the shoulders of two shorter black figures. It is accompanied by “We Embrace Fatherhood” in text.
We Embrace Fatherhood Pledge
I pledge to love my child forever and unconditionally
I pledge to be involved, responsible, and committed
I pledge to teach my child to empower themselves
I pledge to listen to and encourage my child
I pledge to take care of myself
I pledge to be accountable for my actions
I pledge to protect my child from unseen danger
I pledge to always SHOW UP
I pledge to rebuke fear and demonstrate courage
I pledge to seek and implement knowledge
I pledge to make my child proud
I pledge to stay down until we come up
I PLEDGE TO EMBRACE FATHERHOOD
Collaborating with the Data CoLab
We Embrace Fatherhood is one of two West Philadelphia organizations that partnered with the District Attorney’s Transparency Analytics (DATA) CoLab to provide data support for their programming and outreach efforts in their community. Specifically, We Embrace Fatherhood was interested in increasing data transparency of crime trends in West and Southwest Philadelphia. We Embrace Fatherhood observed that many West and Southwest Philadelphia community members did not see positive developments in community safety and violence interruption, contributing to a lack of morale and feelings of safety in their neighborhoods. We Embrace Fatherhood believed that access to criminal legal data and information, along with data literacy, could improve this. The organization also worked collaboratively with the community to learn more about their concerns and needs.
Through their community outreach they identified that residents are particularly concerned and interested in data about the rate of violent crimes, property crimes and special victims’ crimes. Given that We Embrace Fatherhood works with residents in both West and Southwest Philadelphia, they ultimately decided that data covering the area of City Council District 3 would be the most useful. Based on the authentic insight and context that We Embrace Fatherhood gathered from the community, they requested recurring reports on crime trends. The recurring reports include public crime data available on the PDAO DATA dashboard as well as other public data sources.
Given the community members’ concerns, the reports include (1) violent incidents including offenses of homicide shootings, non-fatal shootings, and aggravated assaults; (2) property crime incidents such as burglary and auto theft; and (3) special victims’ incidents including sexual assault, statutory rape, and other sex offenses. The reports provide monthly counts and percentages of criminal incidents and arrests categorized by age, race, and gender. We Embrace Fatherhood is able to use these reports to not only provide clear information to their community, but also to inform advocacy and intervention efforts. In an effort to make them as accessible to the community as possible, the DATA CoLab and We Embrace Fatherhood collaborated to create a revamped and easily digestible one pager for community members to use and interact with the data. This provides direct, accessible, and community friendly data transparency regarding any increase or decrease in violent, property and special victims’ crimes for some of the most vulnerable communities in West and Southwest Philadelphia.
The data from the City Council District 3 report/one pager is shared and discussed at We Embrace Fatherhood associated community events and programming. Any concerning trends can be addressed, discussed and scrutinized to establish capacity to understand the data and possible interventions. To ensure that the data is readily available and accessible by community, We Embrace Fatherhood shares the one pager on their community TV platform, GoodInfoTV. The City Council District 3 report/one pager is one of many digital products provided by the DATA CoLab to inform We Embrace Fatherhood’s programing, advocacy and outreach efforts. The additional data products include the Quarterly Shooting Victims Report, Annual Shooting Victims Report and the Geographical Incident Arrest and Cases reports (GeoIAC). The Quarterly and Annual Shooting Victims Report provides shooting statistics and the associated demographics in West and Southwest Philadelphia on a quarterly and annual basis. The GeoIAC report contain summary numbers on incidents reported, arrests made, and cases opened for various places around Philadelphia which can be customized to only consider and track data on said summary numbers on incidents reported, arrests made, and cases opened in a specific service area or geographic boundary. The previously named data products all play a vital role in promoting and supporting data transparency, community advocacy and community violence intervention in real time. This ensures adaptability, which is instrumental in obtaining accurate and current insight into community needs.
The DATA CoLab team and West/Southwest Philadelphia community organizations come together for an end of Workshop group photo.
Building Data Capacity
A goal of The DATA CoLab is to help establish or grow the current data capacity for all community-based organizations involved in the CoLab initiative. One approach to achieving this goal is by providing workshops curated to each organization’s needs. Given their interest in criminal legal data and sharing it with the community, the DATA CoLab and members of the DATA Lab hosted a Data Dashboard workshop, introducing the DAO’s publicly available data dashboard and information on how to access, interpret, and use the data. The workshop was offered given to both the West and Southwest partners together, with the goal of building and maintaining data capacity and sustainability. In addition to introducing the dashboard, the workshop discussed the various law enforcement agencies that utilize data and have data teams (e.g. PDAO, Mayor’s office, Police, Corrections). Additionally, community partners learned about how cases move and advance throughout the criminal justice system, and the DAO’s vision of data transparency and data democratization.
Following the workshop, participating organizations reported knowing more about the data dashboard and how to use it; feeling confident in their ability to use the dashboard; and believing that the available data is relevant to their work and communities.
Wes Weaver, Director of Analytics at Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office provides a demonstration to community partners on how to filter for specific incident data on the PDAO DATA Dashboard
Conclusion
The DATA CoLab is honored to partner with We Embrace Fatherhood to support their data needs with regards to programing, advocacy and outreach efforts. Data transparency and data democratization are key to empowering and supporting community organizations like We Embrace Fatherhood on their quest to establish equity in Black and brown communities, promote healthy nuclear families and promote community activism and accountability. The DATA CoLab is excited to see how community organizations like We Embrace Fatherhood utilize and incorporate data into their future work.
Acknowledgements
The DATA CoLab is honored to work with organizations like We Embrace Fatherhood.
We welcome feedback, comments, and inquiries to collaborate with the CoLab or support for the associated community partners at [email protected].
The DATA CoLab is made possible through funding from the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD).